


there is a tavern in the town (and there my dear love sits him down)

by obsessivereader



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dream Sequence, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the CATFA pub scene always breaks my heart so this is me trying to make it better for Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivereader/pseuds/obsessivereader
Summary: When he walks into the pub, there's an instant feeling of recognition. He knows there's a group of soldiers waiting for him at one of the tables. He knows a woman in a red dress will walk in. He knows there is someone waiting for him at the bar.Wanda places her hand on Steve’s brow and closes her eyes. The red glow from her hand intensifies and casts uneasy shadows on Steve’s still face. After about a minute, the glow fades and her hand drops back to her side.“He fights me,” she whispers. She looks up at Bucky with an obscure pain in her eyes. “He doesn’t know me in there. I can't get close.”“Send me in.”





	there is a tavern in the town (and there my dear love sits him down)

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I see the pub scene in CATFA, my heart breaks all over again for Bucky. This is my fix-it for him, and for me. 
> 
> The title is taken from the song that's being sung in the background by the Howlies and other people in the pub. It contains such terrible lines as:  
> There is a tavern in the town,  
> And there my dear love sits him down,  
> And drinks his wine 'mid laughter free,  
> And never, never thinks of me.
> 
> The full lyrics can be found here [(x)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_a_Tavern_in_the_Town) Read at your own risk.
> 
> Thank you to [Jin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlinli/pseuds/jinlinli) for betaing this and helping me make this better, and to [Rohkeutta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta) for doing a test read and reassuring me that the whole thing made sense!

When he walks into the pub, there's an instant feeling of recognition. The interior is dim, and its furnishings are old and covered with the dark rime of time. A song is playing on the radio, a half-remembered tune of love and longing and loss.

There are soldiers in uniform sitting at tables around the room, laughing and shouting to be heard over the music. A woman with her blonde hair slowly unraveling out of its victory roll winds her way between the tables with a tray full of a strange assortment of mugs. 

Over in the corner, five soldiers with an unusual mix of rank, insignia, and race sit around a table drinking beer. He trusts each and every one of them, and would have them at his back in many battles to come. 

He knows a woman in a red dress will walk in. She is a brawler with steel in her bones, a friend, an ally, a might have been. He’d said goodbye to her a long time ago, and his chance with her. 

He knows there’s a man at the bar looking lost and hollow, nursing a tumbler of whiskey. Another might have been, if only he’d had the courage to see. That man had held his heart for as long as he can remember, and where the woman is the mirror to his soul, the man is the other half of it. 

His feet are moving before he's conscious of making a decision. He knows that the man is the most important thing in his life. He knows that he has wronged the man in the most terrible way. 

Maybe this time, he can get it right.

*

The door of the medical wing swings open hard enough to crash against the wall as Bucky shoves it out of the way and strides through. He ignores the startled exclamations of the nurses as his gaze goes straight to Steve, lying pale and still on the hospital bed. His hair sticks out at odd angles through the nest of electrodes and wires sprouting from his head. An IV line trails out from a needle in his wrist. Bucky’s hand twitches with the need to rip everything off.

Sam and Wanda both turn to watch him carefully from where they stand on either side of Steve’s bed. 

“How is he.”

Sam shakes his head, mouth set in a grim line. “No response.”

“Do we know what’s wrong with him?” 

All he’d seen from his vantage point on the roof a block away was Steve raising his shield to block some kind of beam from the Goblin Queen in her glorified bikini. She’d teleported away, leaving Steve to crumple to the ground with the shield still strapped to his arm. Sam had landed by his side within moments, while Bucky was still uselessly racing over rooftops to get to him. 

Sam looks at Wanda. Her face is drawn as she looks down at Steve, a graze on her cheek already purpling into a bruise. She holds her hand over Steve’s forehead, and everyone freezes as red light emanates from her hand and cascades down to wind around Steve’s head. “He’s trapped in there.”

Bucky looks from Steve to Wanda. “What do you mean _trapped?_ ” 

“The Goblin Queen did something to him, and now I can’t sense him. I think…” She hesitates as though searching for the right words. “I think he’s lost inside his own head. It’s like a dream he can’t wake up from.”

“Brain scans seem to confirm that,” Sam says. “According to Cho, there’s a lot of activity in the medial temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and frontal lobe.”

“Memory and fantasy,” Bucky says. After all the brain scans he’s undergone, he has a more than passing acquaintance with how a human brain functions. 

Sam nods. “Like having a lucid dream, but not _knowing_ you’re having a lucid dream.”

Bucky studies Wanda, taking in her exhaustion and distress. He’d heard about her strange ability to enter another person’s mind, something that had made him wary of her for a long time. He also knows how much havoc she’d caused with that ability, and how much she hates using it now. With a mental apology, he says “Can you go in there?” 

Wanda wraps her arms around her waist with a haunted look in her eyes. But then, she takes one deep breath and nods on the exhale, an Avenger to the core. 

She places her hand on Steve’s brow and closes her eyes. The red glow from her hand intensifies and casts uneasy shadows on Steve’s still face. 

After about a minute, a minute in which no one in the room moves; not him, not Sam, not the nurses in attendance; the glow fades and her hand drops back to her side.

“He fights me,” she whispers. She looks up at Bucky with an obscure pain in her eyes. “He doesn’t know me in there. I can't get close.”

“Send me in.” 

Sam gives him a worried look. “Are you sure about this, man?”

Nausea churns in his gut as the implications of just what he’s set himself up for start to sink in. He grits his teeth and nods. He’d sworn never to let anyone mess with his head ever again, but it’s Steve, simple as that. 

“I don’t know what you’ll find in there,” Wanda says. Her eyes are wide with worry, whether for him or for Steve, or both, he can’t tell. 

“I'll find Steve.” That’s all that mattered. He gives her a level look. “Don't go poking around inside my head, kid. There’s stuff there no one wants to see.” Least of all him. 

She gives him a solemn nod. 

He climbs up onto Steve’s bed and lies down, pretending not to hear the protests from the head nurse about his battle-stained tac suit. At a signal from Sam, the nurses wheel over a cart full of equipment and attach electrodes to his forehead and a heart rate monitor clip to his finger. 

Nothing will happen to him, he tells himself. He can trust Wanda. Sam will be watching. He can do this.

When the sound of a second heartbeat joins Steve’s on the heart monitor, Wanda raises hands wreathed in red and looks at him. He takes a few deep breaths and swallows back bile. “Okay,” he manages. 

He focuses on the beeping of the heart monitors, listening to the intertwined beats of their heart; Steve’s slow and steady, his elevated; and uses it as an anchor to keep himself from shoving Wanda away from him. 

The last thing he sees are Wanda’s dark eyes before the room fades around him in a swirl of red smoke. 

*

When the smoke clears, he finds himself standing in a featureless grey landscape. There’s a red string tied to his wrist, trailing behind him to disappear into the distance. He can’t feel it or touch it, it’s just... there. 

Wanda.

He’s glad one of them had their head on straight, because he hadn’t even thought about how he was getting back. 

He arbitrarily assigns the direction he’s facing as north and the origin point of the string as south. Somewhere to the northeast, he spots a lighter patch of grey. Not having any better options for finding Steve, he heads in that direction.

He’s been walking for what what feels like five minutes when a pub appears ahead of him, golden light streaming out of the windows and the open doorway. When he tries to circle behind it to check out the back, he finds he can’t. Whether he tries to go to the left side or the right, the pub seems to shift with him to present him with the same view. 

Front door it is, then. 

After a quick peek through one of the windows, he steps over the threshold and walks into the deserted pub. It looks like a generic English-style pub, the sort that can be found all over the world. And yet... something about it pulls at his memory. 

When he notices an entryway at the back of the pub, the sense of recognition resolves into a chill that raises the hairs on the back of his neck. There’s a taproom through it, he thinks, where a short, stocky bartender with frizzy ginger hair will be serving whiskey. And if he strains his ears, he can just make out a familiar song playing in the background. 

He remembers sitting at the bar, half mad with trying to figure out what the fuck Zola had done to him. His skin had itched and prickled with the fear that something was growing inside of him. Whatever it was, he’d wanted nothing to do it—he didn’t care that it made him stronger, heal faster. 

And then there was Steve, golden and straight and tall, beautiful as some avenging angel, and no longer his. He’d seen the way Carter looked at him, and he’d seen the way Steve looked back. 

Whatever promises he’d made to himself while strapped to that table, that he’d finally tell Steve how he felt… he’d been too late. He had no right to get in between them. He was, and would forever remain, just the best friend. 

For all his good intentions, a small, petty, twisted part of had made him speak up and try to be seen, be acknowledged by the two of them. But in the bright fire of their common purpose, he’d faded to insignificance—nothing but a ragged, frayed shade. 

He’d made his peace with it then, that Steve would probably marry Carter if they made it out of the war. And it was good. He was happy for them. 

Or he would’ve been, given time. 

Fantasy and memory, Sam had said. He’d hunted down the last recording from the Valkyrie and heard the conversation between Carter and Steve. If this is Steve’s fantasy melded with memory, then he’s pretty sure he knows what he’s going to see when he walks into the taproom. 

He steels himself and walks through the entrance, the metal arm seeming to drag at him more than usual. 

When he catches sight of the two people doing the two-step shuffle on the small dancefloor, he stops dead in his tracks. His heart is going triple time, banging around in his chest like it’s trying to break free from the shelter of his body. Carter, he’d been prepared for. But this… Steve with his arms around Bucky’s old self, the one that still lived in Steve’s memory… 

It should’ve made him happy to know that Steve might want more from him than just friendship. Instead, he wants to turn away, to never have had his suspicion confirmed that he—the Bucky that had come out the other side of Hydra—would always be the inferior version. Even knowing it, he’d grab the chance to be with Steve anyway, even as it destroys him from the inside.

So he makes himself look at the way Steve holds past-Bucky like he’s something precious, take in the soft glow in Steve’s eyes as he smiles down at the man in his arms. Maybe if he burns the sight into his memory, he might finally be able to free himself of the hopeless yearning that’s dogged him all his life. 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. _Don’t make it about you. You’re here for Steve._ One thing Hydra had taught him was how to compartmentalise, so he ignores the ache in his chest and pushes all his stupid, messy feelings aside. 

After that moment to compose himself, he tries to study the scene before him objectively. Steve seems unhurt, and his eyes are clear as he dances with past-Bucky. The longer Bucky observes Steve, the more convinced he is that Steve’s not under any kind of outside influence. This whole scene—the pub, the dance, past-Bucky—they were all constructed by Steve’s mind.

Past-Bucky though, no matter how Bucky squints, he can’t quite seem to bring him into focus. There's an indistinct quality about him, like an old photograph seen through a layer of dust and time. As he watches, past-Bucky’s edges became even more unstable. A gradual change begins to creep over him—hair growing longer, body bulking up, left arm turning into metal. Steve continues dancing with him like he doesn’t notice the change taking place right in front of him.

Bucky’s breath catches. 

As the song comes to a close, Steve leans forward and kisses the Bucky he’s dancing with, chaste and sweet.

 _Fuck that_. 

If Steve wants to kiss a Bucky with a metal arm, the real one is right here and ready to kiss him back. Time to fucking cut in.

*

He should be the happiest person in the world right now, with the person he loves best in his arms. And yet… 

There’s a niggling sense of wrongness in the back of his mind. Is it the smudged edges of the man he’s dancing with? A faded quality to him? He knows it’s not the sadness in his partner’s eyes, because the desperate wish to ease it feels old and familiar.

As they spin slowly around the dancefloor, the man starts to change. His hair goes from short to shoulder-length, his face ages and becomes careworn, resignation and regret layer over the sadness in his eyes. But the soul that shines out from behind those eyes, that remains the same, and is still beautiful enough to take his breath away. 

Something in him eases as he watches the transformation take place. Buoyed by the sense that nothing can go wrong in this place, he leans forward and kisses the man. When he pulls away, thrown by the lack of reaction, his sense of disquiet returns. He has no idea how his partner will react to being kissed, and when he searches his partner’s eyes, it seems like his partner doesn’t know either.

There’s a flicker in the corner of his eye, but something inside him screams _Don’t look_! He blinks and then— 

*

_When he walks into the pub, there's an instant feeling of recognition. He knows there's a group of soldiers waiting for him at one of the tables. He knows a woman in a red dress will walk in. He knows there is someone waiting for him at the bar._

_*_

What the fuck, Bucky thinks as he looks around him. He’s back out in the featureless grey. 

_Goddammit, Steve, what the hell are you doing?_

He grits his teeth and starts running, using the red cord around his wrist to help him navigate back to Steve. When he gets to the pub, Steve is already in the taproom, talking to past-Bucky at the bar. He walks up to them. 

“Steve.” 

Steve twitches, like he’s trying to shake off a fly.

Not again, Bucky thinks, as he’s tossed out into the greyness again.

*

_When he walks into the bar, there's an instant feeling of recognition..._

_*_

Faster. Get there faster. Get there before Steve starts talking to the other Bucky. Maybe if he’s the only Bucky talking to Steve, he can get through to him.

*

_When he walks into the bar…_

_*_

Bucky skids into the pub and looks around until he spots Steve standing in front of the entrance to the taproom. “Steve,” he calls, just as Steve takes a step forward. 

_See me, Steve, come on, see me._

*****

He stands in front of a dim entryway. He knows that through it is a taproom where a man sits at the bar knocking back whiskey like there are demon’s he’s trying to outrun. 

He’d missed it back then, too distracted by his infatuation with someone who challenged him and complemented him and made his heart race. And then, enamoured with finally being able to _do_ things, to make an actual difference, he’d dragged his friend along in his wake, never realising the cost until it was too late.

Part of him knows that this place is long gone and he cannot right the wrong he did here, but maybe he can finally voice the secret he hadn’t realised he carried until it was too late. He steps forward with the odd sense that he’s done this many times before. 

“Steve.”

At the sound of that name, something slots into place inside him. He’s almost not surprised when he turns around to see.... _him_. 

In the dim light of the pub, his friend stands out in stark relief from his surroundings. His hair falls to his shoulder. His black tactical gear makes him look sleek and lethal. There’s a red string tied around his right wrist, while his left arm is made of a silvery metal that gleams under the warm glow of the incandescent lights. 

This is right, he thinks, this is how his friend should be, even though he looks jarringly out of place in the dated interior of the pub.

“Am I Steve?” he asks finally, even though he already knows the answer. 

His friend nods once, beautiful grey eyes steady and grave on his. “Steve Rogers,” he says. “And I’m Bucky.” 

“Bucky,” he says, savouring the familiar shape of the word in his mouth. That was the name that hovered at the edge of his consciousness. _Bucky._

Bucky looks vibrant and more _real_ than everything around them. Against the solid density of his presence, their surroundings pale to a hazy insubstantiality. No, he realises, as he looks around him. It’s not that Bucky is more real, it’s that everything around them is _less_ than real. 

He edges away from that thought and holds out his hand to Bucky. “Dance with me?” Silence falls around them save for the song playing on the radio. 

“Sure thing, pal,” Bucky answers, with a matching gravity in his soft, graveled voice. 

Heart beating faster than normal, he takes Bucky’s hand and leads him out to the dancefloor. There’s an awkward moment when they both try to place their hands on each other’s waist in the leading position, but then Bucky gracefully cedes it to him by placing his left hand on Steve’s shoulder. It settles there light as a butterfly’s touch even though Steve wants to feel the full weight of it. 

Feeling emboldened by the look in Bucky’s eyes, he pulls Bucky closer so he can rest their clasped hands on his chest. Bucky’s close enough to kiss, he can’t help but think.

Bucky searches his eyes. “What’re you doing here, Steve?” 

He gives Bucky a quizzical look. “Dancing with you.” 

“Where is here, actually?”

Steve frowns as unease prickles along his spine. 

Bucky’s hand tightens around his. “You know what,” Bucky says hurriedly, “nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”

Relief spreads cool tendrils through him. 

They dance together in silence for several minutes, drifting closer and closer until their chests press together. Steve rests his temple against Bucky’s and lets the warmth of Bucky’s body seep into his own.

Bucky leans back enough to meet Steve’s eyes. “Can I show you something?” 

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Guys too, Steve.” Bucky’s grin is sharp and wicked but there’s a touch of seriousness in his eyes that belies his teasing tone. 

Steve hesitates a moment before saying, “Sure.”

Bucky pulls away from him, but keeps their hands clasped as he leads Steve into the main area of the pub. The closer they get to the pub entrance, the harder it is for Steve to make himself follow. 

Bucky watches him when he comes to a stop at the threshold to the outside. Through the open doorway, he sees nothing but grey. 

He gives Bucky a look of mute appeal. “I’m not ready to go out there.”

“Why not?” Bucky asks, soft and careful.

Steve looks at their joined hands and finally allows himself to remember. “He doesn’t want me out there. Not like this.” 

Bucky steps closer and wraps a warm hand around the back of his neck. “He does. He’s always wanted you. If you come with me, I can prove it to you.”

Steve looks back into the interior of the pub, letting himself see its hazy unreality, and the way motion stutters to a stop at the periphery of his vision. Bucky had followed him on faith and paid the price for it. Now it’s his turn.

His hand tightens on Bucky’s. “Let’s go.”

They walk out the door into a featureless grey landscape. 

*

Bucky comes to in the bed next to Steve. Nurses are rushing around them checking monitors and equipment. Dr Cho is paged. Sam and Wanda stand up from the chairs at the side of the room. 

He ignores all of it and turns his head on the pillow to watch as Steve’s eyelids flicker. After a moment’s hesitation, he threads his fingers through Steve’s, holds on tight, and prays that it wasn’t all a dream. 

Steve’s eyelids drift up, revealing blue, blue eyes. Bucky’s never been so relieved to see them. 

“Bucky,” Steve rasps. He takes in the electrodes strapped to Bucky’s forehead and then promptly blushes. “Was that you in there?”

Somewhere in the background, he can hear Sam asking Dr Cho to give them a few minutes of privacy. Bucky nods as hope unfurls its wings inside him.

“So I guess you know, then,” Steve says.

The corner of his mouth wants to tug up at the way Steve can’t quite meet his eyes. “Know?”

Steve’s face takes on a determinedly neutral expression as he looks down to fuss with the IV line strapped to his wrist. “Nevermind.”

“I know that you owe me a dance.”

Steve’s gaze snaps back to his. Then, as though he’s just noticed, Steve looks down at their joined hands. He glances at Bucky sidelong, with that wry smile that Bucky would follow, _had_ followed, to the ends of the earth and beyond. 

“You are such a jerk, Buck.”

“And you love it.” Then it’s his turn to blush because he’d meant it as a joke, but Jesus that’d come out sounding presumptuous as fuck. 

“Yeah.” Steve’s hand tightens on his. “Yeah, I do.”

“About goddamned time, man,” Sam says from somewhere nearby. It’s followed by a choked-off and slightly watery giggle from Wanda. 

Bucky doesn’t bother looking away from Steve’s warm eyes. In fact, he’s feeling so mellow, he doesn’t even bother giving them the finger. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr :) [yetanotherobsessivereader](http://yetanotherobsessivereader.tumblr.com/)


End file.
